Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 14:50:46 -0600
From: Emilie Renee Karr
Subject: "Wheels of Iscariot" 1/?
X-Files Fanfic
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot"
Author: Emilie Renee Karr (ekarr@bowdoin.edu)
Category: SR, maybe some A (just a warning: it ain't *M*SR...)
Spoilers: oodles, up to & including Gesthemane
Rating: PG-13, for suggestive scenes but nothing descriptive.
Feedback: One day, I may have such sublime confidence in my work
that I will simply assume that all are reading and liking it.
But if it ever comes, that day is faaaaaaar in the future, so for
now I'll echo the dignified request of many fanfic writers:
PLEASE! *please* pretty please with sugar on top! e-mail
ekarr@bowdoin.edu
Summary: Beware of what seems to be, for there are wheels within
wheels that we have still to notice. There are sides of Alex
Krycek that we have yet to see. And there is far more to Dana
Scully than we will ever know...
DISCLAIMER: We all know it--The X-Files aren't ours, no matter
how we play with them. They belong to Chris "the Man" Carter,
10-13 "I made this" Productions, and FOX "we actually do have a
couple of quality shows midst the rest" Studios. All I own of
this world is the story...
Wheels of Iscariot
Emilie Renee Karr
In the darkness she placed her hand over the telephone and lifted
it again, letting the receiver remain in its cradle.
They would already know. Why tell them something they would
surely have verified a thousand times? If they wanted proof from
her lips then they would call her. The number she remembered was
only for the most dire of circumstances. Who knows who could be
listening? If anyone ever found her connections--
It was so obviously a hoax. The body, hidden from most eyes.
Supposedly so mutilated that a close acquaintance was needed for
identification. And they relying on her words.
No one where it mattered could possibly believe Fox Mulder was
dead. All her crocodile tears couldn't convince them.
Artificial lumps in her throat, acting all for her partner's
sake, perhaps the fools in the lower echelons accepted it but
they blindly accepted all of the truths they were handed. Those
in positions of importance could not be hoodwinked so easily.
And those that would answer if she dialed that number--they
understood how false truth was. She didn't need to tell them
what they already knew. She wasn't here to be their spy.
He had given her a far greater assignment.
Six years ago, a note, anonymous as they always were, had
appeared under her door.
At the dance club address written on it she soon pinpointed the
sender. Watching her coolly, seated at a table but not even
sipping the drink next to his folded hands.
If he were dressed even the slightest more flamboyantly he would
have been conspicuous. Men of his sort appeared more on movie
screens than in cheap clubs, though it was a rare dashing hero
that projected such darkness. Not the brooding sort of some
matinee idols, but an air of coiled blackness beneath the brows.
Imperceptible to most, but she had experience noticing the
slightest hints of it. A cobra suckling its fangs, contemplating
striking from its hidden lair.
He wanted her, for some task, some plan, the scope of which she
couldn't yet guess at. But he needed her only as a cog, another
part of whatever machine he was constructing.
She moved onto the dance floor. The only control she could gain
would be over him. Seeing that his desire for her skills was
balanced by his desire for herself. With this one such a
proposition would be far from unpleasant.
For a moment she let the music wash over her, absorbing the beat
until it became a part of her, matching her rhythms. Then she
began to move, allowing the harsh sounds reign over her limbs.
She carefully retained most control; for him, while his body
might be excited by exaggerated gestures, his mind would be put
off. And the mind was all she cared about capturing. For the
time that she could hold it, at least.
His eyes locked with hers, and slowly he rose, advanced toward
her. Began to dance as well, at first to the music and then to
her motions, insinuating himself between them, echoing her,
dancing with her. To other watchers perhaps their difference in
height appeared unusual, but she made sure that his eyes stayed
focused on her own so closely that he would barely realize how
far he looked down.
Approaching, pulling back; shoulders, hips, legs moving in tempo
with hers. Each time drawing that much closer before falling
away, each time feeling his heat a little warmer on her skin.
At last she did not retreat, and for an instant they were dancing
as one body, herself pressed against his fire.
The instant before their union was complete she stepped away from
it, and was gratified to hear his tiny gasp. He exhaled harshly,
steadying himself with a second breath. Whispered, "How much?"
"I'm not a prostitute." Firmly, but without anger. More than
once before she had been mistaken as such. The equation didn't
hold, however; she had nothing in common with them. Money was
never involved, and she didn't deal in sex, the fulfillment of
the body. Her realm, her currency was deeper, dwelling in the
mind, the soul, the heart.
For a moment there she had touched his mind; his gasp had not
been for the physical intensity but the mental anticipation.
"Come with me, then," he requested. She nodded, taking his hand
and carefully avoiding other contact. Balancing him delicately
they made their way out of the noise of the club into the street,
then into the quiet of his car.
They drove to a hotel rather than a home. Of course he wouldn't
dare show her something so personal.
When the door closed behind them she faced him. "Is this safe
and sufficiently private?"
"It should be."
"What do you want, then?"
"Anything beyond a night of pleasure?" he asked, raising his
eyebrows.
"If that's all, I might as well leave. Others of your background
have more significant purposes."
"So you know me." The slightest hint of surprise on his face.
"Not you, individually," she replied truthfully. "But who you
work for, or who work for you. I recognize them and theirs."
"I doubt you actually would know who works for me. You couldn't
even guess who I am." He regarded her thoughtfully. "But I know
you individually. I have your name."
She shrugged. "I'm a government employee. It's easy enough to
find it out."
"True, you don't use a pseudonym," he agreed. "And you have a
popular reputation as a fine, upcoming young agent. Dana Scully,
one of the many bright lights of the FBI."
She accepted the praise graciously.
"In certain circles--those which you identified me as belonging
to--you have an even greater reputation."
"Which is why you've come to me."
"Perhaps I'm just here to test it."
She drew imperceptibly closer to him, so he looked down into her
face as she spoke. "Proceed, then."
"I'm looking for more than a little simplistic whoring."
Grudgingly she had to admit she was impressed. His voice was
still cold, calm, despite the tension his body radiated because
of her nearness. This one had almost as much control as she
herself.
He must be more than the callow youth he appeared to be. A man
as young, as virile, as he looked to be would never have been
able to hold himself so still; to resist the demands of his body
he would have had to fall back, increase the distance between
them. But though he was close enough that his dark hair nearly
brushed her face this man held himself iron-straight. As if she
wasn't anything more than a shadow or an animal.
"I can do whatever you want me to. The only question is will I
do it."
"It isn't an easy assignment." Speaking as if he knew he only
interested her further with every hint he dropped. "It will be
far more than one night."
"How long?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Well over a year. Concentrating on
one man. The thing is, we don't need a spy. We have plenty of
observers.
"But we want influence. Control. And knowledge that a spy could
never find. Windows to his heart, to his memories, to everything
about him."
She stepped back, dropping the come-hither routine in favor of
contemplating this petition. "And why did you come to me?"
"Because of your abilities. And because you're positioned
conveniently. You've already insinuated yourself in the Bureau."
"I didn't cheat. I earned my way in. Every degree I have I
deserve." One of the biggest dangers of her other reputation was
that those who knew of it believed the two to be related. That
she was nothing more than a stupid creature who had slept and
connived her way through schooling and the Academy and the rest.
But he shook his head. "That's why you got my note. This isn't a
job for a fake. He's smart, this man; he'd catch you in a flash
if you weren't able to hold your own.
"But you have all the real talents required. You actually hold
the position. Everything about you would be true."
"Except for my reasons for being there."
And now it was his turn to move close to her, the same dance as
at the club, only slower and to a much deeper beat. "Could you
act your part, hiding truth with reality, twenty-four hours a day
for as long as it takes? How long can you remain on stage
convincing an audience of one? That's all I need to know."
She smiled sweetly up at him, curling her red hair behind her ear
with one graceful hand. "In eight years, my family has never
seen the side of me you're seeing now. And I love my family; I'm
close to them. I told you, I can do whatever you could ask.
But," and her smile hardened, "I haven't yet heard why I should
bother."
"Why do you do anything for them?" he asked.
"Because they ask. Because they have knowledge," and she drew
her lips back from her teeth, "they have a hold over me that I
haven't yet broken. But you're not one of them," instantly
shifting to a gentle expression, erasing all traces of the snarl.
Displaying her acting; she knew he would be unable to tell her
actual feelings. And he would be impressed.
Of course neither would he show it. "You're right," he murmured,
"I'm not one of theirs. But this audience is. A principle pawn.
Only they don't have the control over him that they think they
do.
"He's dangerous. To them and to everyone else; to our interests
as well. And if /they/ can't move him effectively, our only
option is to use him instead. Through you, if possible.
"I can give the standard rewards--money, treasures, wishes
granted. But I'm also offering power. Power among the interests
I support. And power over one of theirs. You could regain
control, retake their hold and instead wield it over them."
She stared long into his dark eyes, wondering what wheels turned
behind them, knowing that her own were just as opaque. He
presented her with temptations Satan himself would find hard to
match. And the greatest of all unspoken, this hardest of tasks,
a challenge that she alone could meet. A bit of trickery that
would call on every skill she possessed, stretch her beyond every
limit. The danger called to her seductively, more so than the
smooth corners of this man's face, his jaw, the lashes shading
the sea-silver eyes.
But it was to those details that she responded now. Her hands
pulled them close to her upturned face, and into his ear she
breathed, "If I pass your test, give me the assignment."
She felt him consciously discard the barricades around his
emotions and then he wrapped his arms around her body, now fully
responsive as she released her own. Against her she felt him
tough, pliant yet stronger again than his apparent age would
indicate. She wasn't the only actor here; this man had talents
almost to compete with her own. If he was as young as she would
have guessed, than he must have power matching what he offered
her.
What truth existed within him? She couldn't tell if the poised,
restrained man was reality or simply the facade of the young man
in his prime that now held her. The youth could as easily be
illusion. Perhaps both were, hiding something further in still.
Or else, like her, they all were different truths, or different
fictions. The key to her own self, that no one saw, was that
every side was a part of her, every facet a reflection of the
core of herself that turned in the light, flashing whatever she
wanted to be seen. That center which she kept clean and free,
untouched by any except her.
Instead, she reached and placed herself in others' centers. But
with this one, she knew she hadn't even stroked the surface. And
he wished to assign her to a man who might be nearly as obscure,
nearly as shrouded. Work at him until she had not only felt his
center but supplanted it with her own.
Which meant that she had no need to touch this man's core. All
that would meet would be a single facet, not but an element of
their existence, smooth and close-fitting only for the brief
moment of now.
At last his lips reached her own and reminded her why this
meeting should happen at all. Her ardent response would leave no
doubt in his own mind. About whether they should do this, and
then about whether she should be given this lovely assignment.
She soon nudged his head back, not pushing away more than what
space she needed to watch his face. "Only one more question," she
murmured, "what should I call you?" To know who assigned her.
"No one uses the name I was born with." His words came rushed,
panting with the effort to speak rationally.
When she made it clear by her stance that nothing would proceed
until she had some answer, he shrugged, shoulders shifting under
her arms. "Those that know me currently call me Alex Krycek."
And then she required no more words.
After, while they lay on the bed, his embrace holding her close,
he whispered into her ear the name that mattered, the only thing
that would count for as long as she held the assignment then
given to her.
The next morning she arose and stretched in the early sunlight.
Krycek hadn't left in the night; surprised, she nudged him awake.
"If you stay, then you'll be of use to me."
At her touch he snapped into full alertness, relaxing only after
his eyes searched the room. Then he sat up and, taking her by
the hand, drew her back to the bed, where he began to comb his
fingers through her hair. "How will you use me?"
"For questioning." Her words were all business but she succumbed
to his touch without hesitation. "For this assignment, I need to
know the target. Inside and out, all you know about him and
more."
"I'll do the best I can." He began to braid the short tresses and
then undo them as she spoke. "What do you have so far?"
"Fox Mulder," she recited from last night. "I've heard of him at
least. He's got his own reputation. 'Spooky' Mulder at the
Academy. In the Violent Crimes section of the Bureau. Not one
of their favorites, though; he's got a reputation as a trouble-
maker. But you say he's one of them despite that?"
"Not one of them," Krycek corrected. "One of their pawns. He
wouldn't report to them; he thinks he's fighting them. And his
renegade status is one of his dangers." He spoke quietly,
clearly, as he told her the basic facts of Fox Mulder's life; his
education, his family, his homes, his job. Data that could be
pulled out of the variety of records that categorize a person's
existence. Easy to obtain, because he could access any such
record, no matter what its classification.
She listened closely, knowing that by the time she met Fox Mulder
she would have memorized it all, intimately familiar with
framework of his life though she would never let him know that.
But there is more to a soul then facts and records, and with this
man there was far more to even his elemental history that could
not be found recorded in any place.
They flew together out of the United States, off the continent,
to a complex hidden under snowy mountains. The people working
there, dressed in white coats or unidentified military uniforms,
spoke a multitude of languages. Their English was accented, each
differently.
They all nodded, bowing their heads, murmuring, "Welcome, Comrade
Krycek," as he lead her past them. An elevator took them into
the depths of the place, where he lead her through twisted silver
halls and at last into an alcove protected by password and keyed
lock.
Surrounded by translucent emerald liquid a woman floated in a
tank. As Scully watched she slowly breathed in the green, chest
rising, at last falling again. "She's alive?"
"As long as she's in here," Krycek told her. "If it can be called
life, with no mind left to speak of, no way to even move, let
alone be human," and his hand caressing her spine reminded her of
living. "But she still has purposes, so she isn't merely left to
die."
As Scully watched the woman breath, the liquid rippling around
her brown hair like that of a mermaid's, Krycek told her who she
was, how she had come to be here. While she peered under the
half-lidded eyes, at their deadness set among living flesh, he
described the importance of this woman, of how Fox Mulder's own
life had been altered, warped by her being.
"This is why he's dangerous," he told her, gazing at the naked
form. "Because we can't let him stand here and see this. So he
thinks she's alive, somewhere, and he's determined to find her."
"His sister," Scully echoed, thinking of family ties and
relationships and filing it away as another path to this man's
heart. Looking up at the dead life, she suppressed a shudder.
He wouldn't want to find the truth about Samantha, no matter how
obsessed he may be.
As they left the room, Krycek mentioned, "Only five people now
have seen her. And only ten have known that tank even exists."
She didn't ask how many of those were still alive; nor of those
dead, how many had met their fate at the hand of the man she
walked beside.
End Part 1
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot" 2/?
Author: Emilie Renee Karr (ekarr@bowdoin.edu)
DISCLAIMER see part 1; on with the story:
She had never killed, and as a medical doctor abhorred most
death, murder the worst of all. But she had no illusions about
the man Krycek; the blood was palpable on his hands, in the way
he gestured and the way he touched her. He moved in a different
manner, in a different sphere, where life was not sacred.
She didn't judge him or hate him, and she didn't deny that his
touch electrified her as few could. They both understood how it
lay between them; only two bonds connected them. One of the
physical, which they both took equal enjoyment from...
And that of the assignment, which she lived for, and he lived for
whenever he was with her.
Of course these two connections twisted, interwove with one
another. "What do you know about past girlfriends?" she'd ask
him, as she relaxed in his lap, his arms encircling her.
His answer was warm breath in her ear, "He's had them, I'll give
you the names. No current one and they've been few and far
between for the most part. Observers haven't noted any one-night
stands."
She nodded, her hair tickling his nose until he turned his cheek
against her head. Invisible to him she smiled, the irony of the
situation not escaping her. No detail of Mulder's life was too
intimate for Krycek to have or find. She demanded more about him
than the most attentive lover.
She laughed to herself when she compared her knowledge of this
man she had never met against what little she knew of the man
sharing her bed.
Not all her time was spent so. She was an FBI agent; most of her
days were at Quantico, attending and giving lectures, conducting
occasional autopsies for other agents. Her job could be dull,
but when at work, she focused on it so exclusively that others
found her cool, logically abstract.
Science had always been her interest, her comfort and her refuge
some time before. She had hidden in its theoretical confines,
and even now she performed it best when withdrawn.
Her reputation around the Bureau, she knew, was that facet of her
personality. The asexual pathologist, analyzing and returning
results without a hint of emotion for victims or criminals or
agents investigating. She had cultivated this, never indicating
how she felt, never even letting it be known that by this point
her work had lost its appeal, its fascination faded to ennui.
So they thought of her as a robot-researcher, nothing more. None
of her acquaintances in the FBI would recognize the woman Alex
Krycek held some nights.
This bifurcation of her life in no way disturbed her; rather it
excited her, charged her with energy as every hour she decided
what mask to wear.
Krycek was also unaffected by it. He too donned a variety of
guises, though she never caught more than a hint of the others.
For long periods of time, sometimes weeks, he would vanish, only
to appear at her door smiling superiorly, dressed in a suit or a
uniform or a garish dance-club ensemble. These remnants were all
that would remain of the role that he cast away when he saw her,
in favor of something she believed was truer to himself. She
became familiar enough with his body, his quirks and his
mannerisms, in intimate enough circumstances that they couldn't
all be faked.
And all the while, whether Krycek was making love to her or gone
with his own affairs, Scully absorbed more and more of the man
Fox Mulder. She knew of his opening of the X-files before he had
even left the VCD. And more than any other agent she understood
his motivations.
Krycek came to her only a few days after that. "Soon," he told
her, brushing his hands over her shoulders. "The wheels are in
motion. You'll be called up to a chief's office within the next
month, and then your assignment begins."
A shiver vibrated through her body, a flash of ecstasy at
anticipation of a meeting she had prepared nearly a year for.
His touch for once didn't move her, as she fell automatically
into the mode which she must soon maintain.
Disappointed by her lack of response he returned to straight
explanation. "You should be made his partner ostensibly, but what
they'll be asking for is evidence to shut him down. They think
that you're perfect for the assignment, between your scientific
background, your known skepticism, and your loyalty to the
Bureau. You are a credit to the FBI, Agent Scully," his bow was
ironic, "and even forces beyond the bureau are on your side."
She cocked her eyebrow at that. "None of them even suspect that I
might have reasons of my own for wanting this? You yourself told
me I had a reputation."
"Only on a few lists. And that was a year ago. I assure you,
those lists have new names now, and nobody remembers that side of
you." Little imagination was needed to figure the fate of those
who had remembered; she didn't ask the particulars. "The only
ones of them that know your name know it only as an agent of the
Bureau, and as their prime choice for closing down Fox Mulder
before he sticks his nose where it doesn't belong."
"Only he's already done so," she remarked.
He shrugged. "And will again. They're incompetent, they don't
know how to deal with him. With the right manipulation he could
be an asset instead of a hindrance."
"I'm the manipulation."
"The best we have." He passed his hands once down her sides,
feeling every curve, and then withdrew to the door. "I'll leave
you to your work. When you meet him you can be in character
without my distraction. I'll rendezvous with you sometime in the
future, to see how you progress." And he was gone, as separate
from her as he had been a year ago.
She submerged the facet of herself that had known Alex Krycek, so
that the only part of her being that showed was the agent who did
her duty to the best of her ability, who followed orders and who
had never danced with any man in a shadowed night club, or taken
the assignment, or seen a woman suspended in a tank deep
underground. Dana Scully could recall these things, but only
distantly, as memories belonging to another woman. The one clear
directive from that woman was the one in the core of her being,
the assignment and all that pertained to it.
Krycek's prediction came true within three weeks. Seated in
Chief Blevin's office, collected and poised, confident in her
abilities, they told her who she had been partnered with.
She accepted the transfer willingly, answered their questions
unhesitantly. "He had a nickname at the Academy," she related
with a nervous smile, as if she were feeling her way through
murky waters. "'Spooky' Mulder."
They all nodded understandingly, their looks almost sympathetic.
Aware that they were throwing her into a tricky situation, with a
pitiful amount of explanation. What she knew of Fox Mulder came
only from gossip; the woman speaking might never have heard the
man's life story whispered softly into her ear.
The tiniest hint of righteous disbelief in her voice when she
questioned their motives. "Am I to understand that I'm supposed
to discredit his work?" Make them squirm a little for calling
such an innocent, green agent into their power plays. Obvious
that she had no prior dealings with any sort of plots.
In the corner of the room, watching her, a man that her outside
self did not know exhaled smoke from his cigarette. Inside she
recognized him as one of them, and noted with hidden relief that
he made no indication that he knew her as anything more than what
she seemed to be.
Her one slip, frightening to her control as it was, was invisible
to all but her. As she raised her hand to knock on the door of
Fox Mulder's basement office she saw it visibly shake, quivering
with nervous enthusiasm.
Consciously she forced it still, told herself that she had reason
to be tense. Greeting a man with such a reputation, much of it
negative. A new partner who had reason to dislike her before
they even met. Someone to make any reasonable person uneasy.
And she knocked.
His words calling her in were precisely what both selves had
expected, comforting in their sarcasm. Her first sight of him
gave her heart a flutter, which she again attributed to nerves.
Rather than to the culmination of the last year, meeting in
reality what she had seen a hundred photographs and images of.
With and without glasses. Though tempted to tell him to leave
them on, she couldn't make the wrong impression.
Before they had exchanged more than a few words they were on
their first case. "Can you identify this compound, Agent Scully?"
It was clearly synthetic; she could hypothesize its origins. But
not with conviction, any more than she could absolutely say what
meaning lay in the marked bodies. And she could never let on
what she guessed. He accepted her silence.
Once in Oregon Agent Scully allowed her inner self to relax. Her
partner matched perfectly with her expectations. His
eccentricities were many and obvious, as he tried both
consciously and unconsciously to frighten her away, to scare her
back and leave him alone with his X-files.
Of course she would never run. The most rejection she gave was a
surprised stare, a bemused frown. Natural confusion at his
nonsensical actions. She called him "Mulder" and didn't blink at
his curt use of her surname. And she smiled at his dry wit. Not
only because she was amused, though he was clever.
Her tenacity and her acceptance would impress him, that she was
fully aware of. More importantly, she saw to it that they worked
well together. Carefully balancing her skeptical disbelief
against his blind faith, all the while she made sure that her
stubbornness was logical and impersonal. Setting herself against
his convictions but not against he himself. The latter would
only antagonize him. The former would strengthen him, something
he would not be oblivious to. She set the foundations of a
sturdy and viable partnership.
The investigation itself intrigued her. It was a likable
experience to be out in the field, interviewing and gathering
evidence with her own hands. Even the autopsy was a unique
experience to her, both the circumstances surrounding it and the
body itself. Not to mention Mulder's flashing camera, her first
chance to observe him in high gear.
Witnessing his energy she calmed herself. "Probably a
chimpanzee," she declared of the corpse.
His face fell, and she wondered if she had spoken wrongly.
Driven him away. But no; he needed truth, he would honor that
far more than praise or mindless agreement.
And she gave him truth as much as she understood it and as far as
she dared. While she had been privy to information about related
happenings, her actual knowledge was sketchy at best. And
despite rumors she had heard from various circles, Dana Scully
was by no means convinced of the existence of extra-terrestrials.
Ignoring those rumors, she had no belief in them at all.
But even her inner self was hard-pressed to rationalize the
evidence they uncovered. Mulder's theories might seem insane on
first look, but they arose from a solid base of inexplicable
facts. Here was a man she could respect more than ridicule.
Only once did she test him. The mosquito bites, so perfectly
placed, offered an irresistible opportunity in light of their
case. Clad in nothing but a thin robe and underclothes, running
to him in a night lit only by candles and the moon.
Plenty of men would have had only one response. As she
understood Fox Mulder, though he might be tempted, he wouldn't
take what was offered.
Her calculations were correct. Even when she leaned against him
he only squeezed her lightly. She felt no tension in his body,
no striving to hold back a response. A gentleman, and an agent
who respected his partner as a person automatically. Her
imitation fear he did not view as a weakness but as a natural
response; his own answer was sympathy, support he felt she
needed.
Somehow, by ways he probably could not even understand, she ended
up lying across his bed, him on the floor beside telling her
secrets he usually kept.
"I remember a bright light, and a presence in the room," with
sincerity vibrating his voice. Outside, lightning flashed, white
across his face but his eyes remained black. His words rasped
out, soft but piercing. And halting, unsure of what to give and
what to hide.
Her encouragement was a subtle thing, a matter of tone and body
language that told his instincts that whatever her words, she
believed, she understood.
And she did, more than he could know. The intensity of his eyes
could burn through her, but could not make out the truth. He
never guessed that she could give name to the unnamed sister. He
never imagined the tank of green in her memory, where his dearest
wish rested.
He described the forces working against him, what little he had
caught of what they did. Suspicious that she was one of them.
"I'm not part of any agenda," she assured him. "You have to trust
me. I'm here to solve this, the same as you." Low-voiced and
calm, with the convincing edge of reality. Giving him an anchor,
the offer to rest against her stability.
And he who had learned to trust only sparingly trusted her.
Whether or not he consciously realized it.
Final confirmation came as she lay readying herself for sleep,
meditating on what she had witnessed while watching the red
numerals of her clock. A telephone beeping, a call in the night
to tell her what they had done. It was no more than what she
suspected. If he had asked she could have told him the most
likely place that implant was now stored.
But of course he didn't ask.
It was not the last call. But it was nearly the last time that
she could have given a simple answer to one of his unasked
questions.
End Part 2
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot" 3/?
Author: Emilie Renee Karr (ekarr@bowdoin.edu)
DISCLAIMER see part 1; on with the story:
Scully, who had at times thought that she had long stopped
growing, that there was nothing new for her to learn, discovered
how mistaken she had been. So many experiences, so many
challenges, every day forcing her to expand and open her mind.
Not too much, of course. Only a crack, enough to give Mulder a
hope of convincing her, but making it a challenge.
"What would I do if you just said, 'Yes, Mulder, that sounds
likely?'" he asked rhetorically of her once.
She dropped him a hint of a smile. Never laugh too much at a
man's jokes, or he'll guess he's being humored. "Realize you've
gone soft?" she suggested, and was rewarded with his own
sarcastic grin.
Nothing more than office banter, but that he spoke so at all,
that he could relax casually with her at work even briefly, gave
her indication of her accomplishment thus far. She scored every
signal, tracking her progress as conscientiously as a broker
watches the rise and fall of the market.
When she recalled it she mentally thanked Krycek for this
assignment, for ending whatever boredom she had had with life.
She only did so rarely, however. For days at a time she
literally would have no chance to think of him, no opportunity to
draw away from her projected self long enough to touch inside.
The key to a great actor is the ability to become the character
played, to live the part so convincingly that even oneself is
fooled. Dana Scully had it in her to be among the most talented
thespians of the century, but she preferred the privacy of
catering to but one individual.
And when the individual was as complex, as multi-dimensioned as
Fox Mulder, her work was not a chore but a game. A puzzle of
such complexity as to afford years of pleasure. With the added
delight of their job, their multiple quests and riddles, she was
never bothered by the progress of the assignment, the many fits
and starts and backtracks on the road to winning his implicit
trust and then more.
And then for a moment it went beyond scores and challenges.
So suddenly it happened that she had no warning, no chance to
compose herself. Her mother's call, and Scully was attending the
funeral of her father, the waves swallowing the rain and then his
ashes. Ahab was dead. And what if where he went he could look
back, what if he could see his daughter? Know what she had never
told him?
He had disliked her entering the Bureau. He would hate her when
he saw beyond that. Saw how cunningly she used people, how
casually she played on weaknesses for her own goals.
If only she could tell him why; if only he could understand her
reasons, of how it happened that she could do this. Explain that
even what she did now was to help, was to save in the end. She
needed to redeem herself in his dead eyes.
Her shell was brittle, cracked; her weakness unfeigned for the
first time in many years. Long ago she had locked her soul away
from everyone but herself, so that when she was again touched the
way she had been that dark night only her body would feel it.
But she had shut her family's love in with her, and now a piece
of that was gone, a hole ripping through all her shields.
His eyes at the office were over-flowing with sympathy,
understanding. He offered support, acknowledging her pain and
then trying to guide her beyond it with his devotion to work,
pulling her into the emotionless specifics.
She had predicted his behavior, she knew what his responses would
be to the very words, only when he spoke them it felt different.
In a way she needed it, required even empty sympathy to help
patch the tear. She leaned against him like a crutch while she
healed.
There was comfort in the assignment as well. "You're sure you're
alright, Dana?" And his hand cradled her cheek. A cheering
amount of progress, contact and use of the first name. He was
beginning to care, and she found pleasure in success.
For the first time too the case they were on became less a mind
game and more a deeper involvement. The man Boggs might have
been torturing her or he might have been speaking his actual
vision of the truth. She wanted to know; she would have liked
little better than to spend twenty four hours alone with him, to
elicit everything stored in his twisted heart and mind. But it
wasn't in character to do so.
On the docks, after the gunshot rang out and she crouched by
Mulder's side, damming back the scarlet blood, she considered the
recent days and months.
No doubt she had enjoyed her occupation. If she were shipped
back to Quantico she might resign. Being an X-files agent was
one of the few placements that she could hold interminably
without risk of boredom. But of course there was more.
Never had she focused so much on one target. And never before
had she the chance to delve so deeply into a soul. Creating
something beautiful, painting a relationship with careful
consideration of every stroke of the brush. Illusion more
convincing than reality. Krycek asked for her craft, and she was
giving him a masterpiece.
For her work to be so crudely ripped away would be a great
injustice. She didn't want to see this project end. Not yet.
Not incomplete when she was succeeding.
So when he lived Scully breathed a long sigh of relief, of thanks
that it was not over.
He worried over her, gratifyingly. Even in the empty hospital
ward with her the only company, even when he for once disbelieved
that it could be true, he asked her why she wouldn't go hear what
her father's words were. His half-accurate empathy had sensed
her sorrow and was concerned.
She didn't bother to tell him what he had no need to understand.
Between her mother's words, and Boggs' rantings, and the vision
her heart acknowledged, she had made peace with Ahab. The
assignment continued.
Months after that, she thought it ended at last. She knew that
the proof he seeked was dangerous. He paid the price for
incaution, and only because of her assignment did she risk
herself to alter the payment.
Another body shot and lying bleeding, but this one injured too
deeply to save. Mulder only barely whisked out of their
clutches; an attempt to sacrifice their pawn for some larger
prize, an attempt she foiled smugly. And another phone call in
the night.
"I can't give up," he told her. "Not as long as the truth is out
there." But he hung up before she could affirm her own devotion.
Cutting her off. She hadn't achieved a tight enough hold, and
now it was broken.
A week later her phone rang again. It took a second to identify
the voice on the other end; she had neither seen nor heard Krycek
for close to a year. His smooth tone fully empowered what had
been dormant for that time.
"You're doing well, I hear."
"Did well, you mean. Or haven't you heard that it's over?"
"He may no longer be your partner," she was informed, "but he
still is your assignment. Unless you think that since the X-
files are closed he'll stop investigating them?"
She only laughed. "I had enough time to build a fairly strong
bond. So I'm to maintain it?"
"They won't remain closed forever. There are too many opposing
forces. One's in command now but it'll fall soon enough. And
he's a danger and a useful piece regardless. Stay with him."
"Your wish is my command." She paused.
He filled the void. "I'm coming back in the area. I need to see
to several things personally. Mind if I drop by?"
"My bed's empty enough."
"Should I be pleased or concerned at your lack of progress?"
"I don't know if I'm going to progress in that direction," Scully
told him. "The key to a heart is rarely directly through hormones
and genitals." Which is why she would never capture Krycek, and
he would never snare her--but those words, though known to both,
remained unspoken.
She contacted Mulder enough to assure that she was far from
forgotten. Her flight down to Puerto Rico convinced her that the
X-files were closed but by no means locked in a back drawer. It
also provided distraction in an all-too-regular routine. The
little pieces of his cases were the only reason she could stand
the increasing monotony.
And then Mulder appeared in the autopsy room with his new
partner.
She should have suspected, but somehow it never occurred to her
that he would be so devious to her, so tricky. A test of her
skill and her patience.
To her he appeared tremendously unnatural, bouncing on his toes
like an eager puppy and going green when she displayed the
autopsy results. She couldn't fault his acting, but even being
so distant from his true nature he radiated a hint of that
vicious fire, the flame that first had drawn her and summoned her
still.
She responded in the only way she could, by ignoring Alex Krycek
as ruthlessly as she had in the past year. Mulder's former
partner cared little for an agent replacing her. And Scully
resented the competition, the sheer cheek of someone thinking
they could worm their way into the assignment as well.
If he managed at all, it was because of her work, her efforts
that had opened Mulder up to others.
Two nights later Krycek stood on her doorstep, suit and tie and
slicked-back hair. That was the first thing she pounced on him
for, when she had ushered him inside. "You had to cut it?"
He wound his hand through her own curls. "For the same reason you
destroyed your own. To give off the right atmosphere of talented
innocence. Remember, I'm an impetuous but obedient young agent,"
and he offered her a boyish grin completely at odds with the
Krycek she well knew.
She slid close. "Obedient to whom?"
His head bent over to nuzzle the back of her neck. "That's why I
came. I have to warn you."
"Of what?" as she ran her fingers through his hair, frowning
slightly at the grease.
"I'm not just suddenly an FBI agent for a joke," he told her. "I
have an assignment of my own."
"From who? Since you maintain you give orders, not follow them."
He told her. She froze for an instant. "You've been their
opponent for how long?"
"But they don't know that."
Down his profile she drew one, two, three fingers. "A triple
agent."
"Equal to you yourself," he replied, capturing her fingers and
kissing her hand in the ancient tradition.
"So why do you have to warn me?"
He sighed. "Because as careful as you've been, they still notice
how close you are. What effect you have on Mulder, and how it's
not part of /their/ plans. You're becoming a problem that
they'll address soon enough."
On the tip of her tongue was the query, how did they know? But
the answer lay in her arms, his mouth warm on hers. He had been
sent as a spy, and to maintain his cover he would give them as
much honesty as he dared. Including her actions, though the
assignment of course would go unmentioned. There was no other
explanation of why at this time she would suddenly be in danger.
Perhaps it was a test, not of her, but of them. To see how they
would react. So a defense could be designed.
And perhaps it also was a test of Mulder. If something should
happen to her, how would he behave?
"How much danger am I in?"
"I don't know yet." He made no promises to tell her. No vows
that he would protect her. She would have seen their emptiness
in a second.
That lack was unrelated to what they shared. They talked as they
always had while basking in the aftermath. "I've heard every
report you've given," he assured her. "So I assigned well."
"I told you I could do whatever you asked," she replied smugly,
curled against him. "He's not so difficult. Once I learned his
vulnerabilities it was a delight."
"Do you want me to be jealous?" he breathed into her ear.
She chuckled, feeling his body echo the humor. "When he doesn't
even call me by my given name?" Of course neither did Krycek, but
the circles he moved in never required names. Using them with
him would be unnatural.
He was attentive to the difference, however. "I noticed. Why
don't you cross that line?"
"I tried."
The one time had been an obvious failure. The emphatic shake of
his head, "I even made my parents call me Mulder." Probably that
was an exaggeration, but the truth she guessed at. A sister of
course would have called him Fox...
Best avoid that; identifying her partially with Samantha could be
useful, but a complete match would drive him away, out of fear of
losing it again. So she called him Mulder and accepted her own
designation as what it was. A sign of closeness, not separation.
"It's not important to him," she explained. "There was no need
for me to antagonize him over it."
"You don't need to defend yourself to me," Krycek murmured,
drawing her even closer. "I've seen how much you matter when
you're onstage. To him you might as well be all that's there."
High compliment from her assigner. There was no sarcasm in his
tone, no anger that when she was with Mulder he might as well not
exist for either of them. They might enjoy each other now but he
understood as well as she that such things had a proper time and
place. And vulnerable emotions had neither.
When Duane Barry smashed through her window, she never even
considered calling for Krycek. Not only because it was Mulder on
the other end of the line did she shout his name. She had the
confidence that he could help. She had that much influence with
him, that he would by now go to great lengths for her.
At the instant of the action, her thoughts hadn't been so
orderly. Barry's face, pressed against the glass and then
breaking past it, had shocked her to the core. However, she had
enough composure to fight back.
But when she slammed the heel of her hand into his shoulder,
right where the red blood flowed from, and his expression changed
not at all, his motions as inexorable as if she had done nothing-
-then she had felt fear. And she had fallen back to what she had
the most confidence in, to her succeeding assignment, screaming
for help from Mulder. Only he never came.
Lying in the trunk of Barry's car, she mentally damned herself
for not taking more care. She had had some idea what that
implant was; why had she ever thought that because it was manmade
the barcoder could have made sense of it? Why, when she had
known too well who it might alert?
And later, as she felt bruises form with every bump of the worn-
out shocks and her mouth tasted of blood's iron, she cursed
Krycek mentally, for not getting back to her, for not using all
his influence to rescue her from this. Her instincts reminded
her never to await salvation rising from his deviltry.
Further on still, when she was roughly yanked from the darkness
into the cold night, she hated Mulder for not arriving in time.
She knew he must be coming, could not help but be out there,
striving to find her from the moment he played his answering
machine. But he was too slow, she hadn't quite a strong enough
hold yet.
She wondered if his new partner was helping or hindering,
suspecting the latter, and then she was swallowed by light.
End Part 3
It's all written, but the rest of it needs editing. I'll get it
out soon, and will do so faster with encouragement ;)
e-mail ekarr@bowdoin.edu
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot" 4/6
Author: Emilie Renee Karr
DISCLAIMER see part 1
The first awareness she had of her body was pain, a distant
unfamiliar ache. And it seemed that there were voices around
her, her mother's, her sister's, her father's. Each talking to
her, cajoling her to return.
Strongest of all was an unidentifiable one, a quiet woman's
words. The second feeling was the touch of that figure, a gentle
hand on her forehead, bringing with it a reminder of life and a
summons back to it.
She feared to open her eyes. For a long time she was convinced
that should she do so she would see an emerald green film, that
the only life that awaited her was not a life at all. She
debated whether death would be better or worse, balanced visions
of heaven and hell against the gauzy nightmare of existence in an
empty tank.
Even once she understood that despite her terror she in fact lay
in a hospital bed, tubes running through her, breathing and
beating and living for her, she hesitated. So much easier to not
make a choice at all, to simply lie still. Even when they cut
her away and her body again was her responsibility she found it
better to drift toward whatever future awaited, making no move of
her own.
At last a hand grasped her own, and in his words Scully
remembered her assignment. What she had left still to do, what
responsibilities still rested on her. Obeying all the wishes of
those surrounding her she blinked and awoke.
Within a week she discharged herself, finally stood alone in her
own apartment. Her mother had cared for it, and Mulder as well
she suspected; dusted, polished, even a full refrigerator.
After she had seen to everything to her satisfaction, she sat on
her bed, stroking her good satin sheets. Her mother had
intentionally put on her favorites and she relished the silkiness
under her fingers.
Her other hand was pricked by the sharp corners of the cross
around her neck and the chain cutting her fingers. Unclasping
it, she watched the light flicker across its spinning form,
flashing white and gold and brown, different shades as each tiny
plane reflected the lamp from a new angle.
As she reached to put it on her bed stand the doorbell rang. And
then she heard the door open and knew who it was.
Quickly she opened the drawer, dropped the cross in and shut it,
having barely the time to stand before he strode in.
For once he didn't swagger; his stance was almost meek. "Are you
opposed to a visitor?"
"Not in the least," she answered him.
And he waited for her to approach him. His touch was gentle,
practically tentative.
"I won't break," she murmured, and proved it to him with a hold
tight enough to crack him instead.
This time discussion waited until she had sated desires lost for
the last three months. Gone with everything else of that time,
in a place she didn't want to pry into. It disturbed her, that
emptiness; but not enough that she wanted to recover it.
When she told him afterwards how she remembered nothing he didn't
press further. Instead he tried somehow to redeem himself in her
eyes, an impossible task but she didn't call him on it. She
didn't demand redemption.
"I couldn't do anything for you," he argued. "My position is
much too low. I didn't even know where you were taken."
And you couldn't have stopped them from taking me at all? she
asked of him silently. He might be low in that echelon but his
own forces were at least as strong and under his command.
Perhaps once they had her his hands were tied, but before that--
she wouldn't be surprised if Krycek had assisted in her
abduction. No matter how much he plead innocence.
"At least we could help once you were back," he murmured, words
muffled by her hair.
She twisted over to face him, their noses inches apart. "What do
you mean?"
Bestowing a surprisingly tender kiss on her forehead he
explained, "You didn't think Nurse Owens was an angel, did you?"
Her mind unwittingly flew to the golden cross hidden by her
bedside. "It had crossed my mind," she admitted. "I didn't know
what to make of her. I wasn't sure if she even lived outside of
my imagination."
"Oh," he assured her with a faint chuckle, "she and her kind are
very real. But they're not heavenly hosts any more than us.
Maybe their sins are less overt," and his hand slid across her
stomach, "but they're just as real. Despite the miracles they
perform."
"She gave me life."
"You definitely wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for her
ministrations," he agreed. "A deed for which I'm grateful," and
he proceeded to express his gratitude in a short and sweet burst
of sin.
Next she had questions for him. Wrapping the satin around
herself to temporarily avoid distraction she quizzed him about
the events of the missing time. Most prominently about her re-
instated partnership. "So the X-files are opened again? Do you
take responsibility for that?"
He frowned for an instant. "No. None of us or them had much to
do with that, other than letting it happen."
"Then how--"
"You remember Assistant Director Skinner?"
"Of course."
Krycek grimaced. "He has far more initiative then anybody knew.
If they hadn't pulled me out of there so fast after you were
taken he would've called the federal hounds onto me. Single-
handedly at Mulder's say-so--he growls at Mulder but he's at your
partner's beck and call. Watch for that."
"Don't worry," she purred back. "In the long run that means he's
my piece too. Would you be happier if the leash weren't so
entangled?"
"I thought you didn't do double targets."
"Times change. I've never done an assignment like this. And
Skinner won't be a trick. He's an honorable man; I've had
practice getting under their skin from the start."
"Just don't be too obvious about it," he whispered easily. "Some
of those honorable men are alive to remember, if you give them a
reminder."
"I'll be quiet as a mouse," she replied, and shed her satin skin
with the faintest hiss. He squeaked obligingly.
She didn't understand all Krycek had meant with his talk of
miracle workers until Mulder attacked her in a hotel room and
then wasn't Mulder anymore, but some strange non-man. When she
saw many identical men vanish from secured cells and a corpse
corrode in bubbling green, then she began to understand.
She didn't immediately recognize the woman Mulder traded for
herself and then watched die, but when he shouted her name she
remembered where she had seen the face, the eyes now living.
Proof additional of what she meant to him.
When working desperately in Alaska to keep his heart beating,
there were long hours she completely forgot the assignment, being
so wrapped up in the immediate project. When she had time to
breath, she pondered whether his "drawing the line" was a
positive or negative sign. Abandoning her to protect her? Lack
of confidence in her ability or desire to keep up with him?
Her smile upon his waking was genuine. A doctor proud of her
achievement. A person pleased that her assignment went on. And
of course superficially an agent delighted to still have a
partner. Back at work again shortly.
Krycek lived close by. She never encountered him on the street
or outside of her apartment in fact, but they shared a few brief
interludes, at times she knew Mulder was occupied. It wouldn't
do at all if he saw them, even if he saw only Krycek alone. She
could see deep enough into Mulder's soul to know that revenge,
though not his style, was not out of the question.
And then she heard nothing from him except an oblique warning on
her phone line.
"Get it out of his hands," instructed the muffled voice. Too
hushed to be identifiable but she could guess. "We need to know
exactly what's on it but it might be dangerous to us if he keeps
it."
It didn't take a high IQ to connect that information with the DAT
tape in the office, with the Navajo code, with the bloody,
feverish Mulder on her doorstep. She didn't know who killed his
father, only that it wasn't him. She didn't have the time to
play guessing games; too many mysteries abounded already. Too
many worries--his accusations, almost as if he knew. For a time
she feared he had discovered everything.
The dialysis filter answered some queries. Mulder and Krycek's
appearance outside her partner's apartment answered more.
Krycek had been correct. They underestimated the danger of their
pawn, and they hadn't the slightest idea how to manipulate him.
Whatever drug they had tossed in Mulder's water to off-balance
him turned a relatively sane man into a killer, an uncontrolled
power nearing psychopathic proportions.
The Fox Mulder that she related to might lose control, but the
viciousness of his attack and the wildness in his eyes as he
fought in the dirty street--that Mulder she had no influence
with.
In his grasp Krycek struggled, shoved against the car hood. His
eyes also were wide, and there was real terror in them. A
creature of confidence until he found himself in a position that
he had no effect on, a cobra powerless in the talons of the
enraged hawk.
That cowardice was new to her, and she filed the data away for
future speculation. And so she would have a reason for that
speculation, and because of his connections to resources she
required, she fired her own gun.
The moment he was freed Krycek ran, meeting her eyes only for a
second, not long enough to even mouth a thanks. Wise move,
knowing she had duties, having his own tasks, and of course they
could never show any bond outside.
Just because he was gone didn't mean that there weren't others
coming. They never sent too few to accomplish a mission. And
the others wouldn't have loyalties to her and her assignment.
Aware of her limitations, she took the only option open to her--
she fled. Dragged Mulder all the way to New Mexico, where a man
awaited them who might have answers to both their questions.
Her first meeting with him was disconcerting. Albert Hosteen
looked as she had pictured him, a wise elder of his people. And
he greeted her with gentle courtesy.
But when she showed him her partner, and he brought her what she
needed to fix Mulder's shoulder, he eyed her shrewdly, saying,
"You call him your partner."
"In the FBI, most agents have partners."
"Even when you're partnered with another?"
Scully shrugged. "If you mean sexually, we're discouraged from
having affairs with our work partners."
He shook his head ponderously. "There are many different kinds of
relationships between two people. Some are helpful. Others are
painful. When one heart is taken and nothing is given in return-
-that can be very dangerous."
"What do you mean?" She held herself back from squirming under
his penetrating, calm gaze.
"My people have a story--a myth, you'd say. A long time ago a
tribe was unhappy, because they couldn't see to travel at night.
"Now, Coyote the trickster once had captured the sun, and they
decided that if he would steal the sun again they could put it up
at night as well. But they knew that he wouldn't do anything for
them just because they asked.
"So they decided to play a trick on the trickster. The chief
called his daughter and asked her to go to Coyote and get the sun
from him. Coyote loves to love women, so she was the best
choice.
"She went to Coyote, and danced for him, and he desired her. But
she told him that though she loved him, she could not make love
to him, because her father had forbidden anyone to have her that
was not worthy.
"Oh, how Coyote tried to prove his worth! She was very beautiful.
He built a mountain by carrying pebbles to a spot until you could
stand on the pile and touch the sky. But the daughter refused.
He dammed a tiny stream until it became a sea; he convinced a
blade of grass to grow up until it became the tallest tree in the
world. But the woman was not his.
"At last she whispered to him that she knew what her father
wanted--he wanted the sun. And Coyote was so eager to please her
that he raced up to the sky without care, and the sun burned him
so hotly that he fell.
"The tribe searched and at last found where he had fallen, and
there was a little piece of the sun that he had snatched up. But
Coyote was gone; they though he had been burned to ash. They all
thought the trickster dead."
"And the piece of the sun?" she asked grudgingly.
"Of course, they put it in the sky, and it is the moon. Bright
enough for lovers to travel by, but no one else. But the woman
never saw the moon, because she went to the lake that Coyote had
made and drowned herself."
Scully regarded the man Albert. He returned the look steadily.
At last she turned away. "She wasn't a very strong woman."
Albert shrugged. "Love in stories is often dangerous."
"There's more dangerous things than that to worry about," she
replied. "I need you to translate this. To help track down
those things." And she gave him the MJ documents.
Many hours later, after she had slept, she found that what he had
interpreted lead only to other questions. And more pressing ones
as well.
Her own name, in entries only just recorded, next to the well-
remembered one of Duane Barry's. So little data to go on;
mentions of a test, columns of meaningless figures, more names
she didn't know.
No one would tell her what they meant. There were only two men
she knew who possibly could find out; and of them only one she
trusted. One she could have do her bidding, without fear of
betraying her when it mattered most.
When Mulder awoke she set him on the track immediately, confident
in his ability to retrieve what she needed.
And then their celphone link was cut, and when the boy took her
to the place the desert was dry and empty and the boxcar filled
with smoke. And her assignment was well and truly over. So she
thought.
Scully's greatest concern was not knowing how to react. Usually
she picked whatever was most logical, but in this case...She had
no plan for the loss of someone supposedly so close as Mulder had
been, yet not a lover or a relation. A partner strictly in the
working sense, but Agent Scully's life was her work. So how--
She settled for being cold, composed as her behavior seemed to
indicate she was. Obviously distressed--the sympathy she evoked
in Skinner's eyes showed the progress she had made in that area--
but valiantly trying to hide it. And awaiting further
instruction on how long to maintain the charade.
Then events slammed into her, piling up like an automobile crash,
one after another, each increasing the disaster. Life, which
seemed easy enough to handle, spun out of her control.
In her neck, the silver pinpoint, filled with microscopic
circuitry. In her dreams, Mulder telling her he lived, and then
at his father's funeral, being told that forces wished to assure
that she did not. Skinner might have been their pawn, who knows
what Krycek knew and what truth lay in what he had told her. And
then Mulder truly was alive, only Melissa her sister was dying.
By the time they found the files, her exhaustion was such that
she couldn't grasp what they had uncovered; when the little
large-skulled people raced passed her for one of the only times
in her life she couldn't distinguish her mind from her
surroundings. She couldn't tell reality from fantasy. At the
cafe, all she asked for was peace; she didn't honestly care if
they got their tape back or if Mulder died to keep it or anything
about the damn object. Getting it away from him was the main
task; did it matter how she did that? All she cared about was
seeing her sister...
And she still was too late.
A night after Missy's death, and Krycek appeared at her door,
smirking. She opened it for him, and he charged in. "You won't
believe it, how he reacted--" he began gloatingly.
Her vision went red, and she wanted to hurt him, wanted to rip
into his flesh until she reached his heart. Her teeth ached with
an unfathomable urge to bite, her nails itching to tear at
something thick with an ancient drive for violence.
Instead she sent all her fury into her voice, whipping him with
her words. "My sister lies dead, I have no more desire for you,
and your assignment may end tonight. Leave."
His expression was honestly surprised. "Why? Why, when it's all
going so well, when you hear what--"
"I don't care." She didn't scream. Her voice never raised above
speaking level. Swears and threats are ineffective tools. And
she could not even summon the means to produce them as it were.
But he understood, and set about restoring order. "I'm sorry, I
honestly am sorry about your sister."
"Did you kill her?" He was their assassin after all.
"I killed Mulder's father, I won't deny that. But Melissa--" his
hesitation so brief only she could have caught it--"I wasn't even
near your place."
"You're lying." No chance for contradiction.
As if knowing the advantages of truth here and now he said, "I
am. They sent me and another to kill you. She wasn't supposed
to be there--I couldn't stop my colleague in time. I didn't pull
the trigger. If it makes you feel any better, it was an accident
we both regret."
"You would have preferred to shoot me? As you were instructed?"
He shook his head. "We had...contingencies. And if you were
shot, no matter how badly, we could have saved you."
Scully, remembering Nurse Owens, did not doubt him. "But she
wasn't worth it? I do your assignment so I can have miracles, but
Missy didn't deserve them?" To add to her anger she felt salt
water collecting her eyes, opened them wide to dry them before
tears could fall.
"Dana," he murmured, and approached her, arms outstretched to
offer empty comfort. "Dana, I'm sorry," but she jerked away from
his touch, snarling, "Don't call me that."
"After three years we're not on a first-name basis?"
"I'm not used to it." She wasn't used to any name from him;
names never were necessary, had no meaning, when his own was
nothing but illusion. And his tone was too much like Mulder's,
too reminiscent of the brief moment when her father died and he
had called her by her given name, instead of the one she had
right to by birth in the Scully family.
She didn't like her name being turned into a symbol, as if they
somehow thought in it dwelt a key to her self. There were no
such keys. She had thrown them away long ago.
"If you could have saved me," she whispered, "then why not her?"
"I would have tried." Now he spoke firmly, deliberately stressing
the honesty in his tone. "I would have sent someone to help, that
could have saved her--if it wasn't for your partner."
"What did Mulder do?" she demanded, startled by this revelation.
"He sent Albert Hosteen to her bedside. Albert's a very special
man. He's one of the few complete humans who could have
recognized whoever I sent for what they were. We couldn't risk
that. We can't let them know that those ones exist." He lowered
his head. "I can't show you proof. I have none. But believe me,
other than for him I would have had a nurse by your sister like
the one who saved you. And I don't make any promises but it's
very likely she would have lived."
End Part 4
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot" 5/6
Author: Emilie Renee Karr
DISCLAIMER see part 1
Scully curled herself up on the corner of her couch, withdrew
inside, where almost nothing could touch her. A second gap there
now, where Missy had been taken from. She thought of her sister,
her smile and her support and her understanding, and wondered if
she forgave her as her father had.
Missy was the most forgiving person she knew. There was no man
or woman so evil that she could not find a slim shard of good
inside.
Of course she had never encountered the people her sister dealt
with. That might have altered her view. But then, still--Missy
would understand. Dana suspected she might have guessed at least
part of it already; she wouldn't condemn what she knew there was
reason for. And she would always love her sister; Missy had told
her that, once, when they both were children; but she knew it was
still true, always true, a basic fact that she could rely on,
even as the rest of the world warped under her feet.
As she thought, Krycek sat on the other end of the couch, slowly
moving closer until he was near enough for contact. When she
didn't shrug that off he dared put his arms on her, around her,
and drew her in. Soon he was stroking her, in ways both calming
and arousing.
She didn't resist. At last, with an inaudible sigh, she
surrendered to him. Never, in either speech or body language,
would she even allow him to guess how little she cared, how
little this affected her.
And never would he know that for an instant she had longed for
another touch, for the reinforcement that Mulder had offered her
with the same gesture. Enfolding her in a hug that had meant
nothing more than friendship in the physical sense, and
everything in the emotional sphere. He taking as well as giving
support, and she leaning against what he offered because it was
all she had to stabilize herself.
He was useful, she admitted that, and she could afford to count
on him for those brief instances because she had built him
sturdily enough. Despite how odd it might feel to she who had
made it a point not to rely on any man, not since she well-knew
how they could treat her. Not safe, except in that he was her
own creation, and she could trust him as a function of herself.
Her assignment.
She never would dream of so using Krycek; but nonetheless he had
his purposes and his charms, and she enjoyed them as she could.
The physical and the emotional were two different relations; and
the care she took to keep them separate served her well.
She wasn't opposed to using him in other ways. When she had
brought him to the height of passion and even his stone defenses
were low, she whispered in his ear, "Give me his name."
"Who?" he groaned, aching for completion.
"Melissa's killer."
"I can't." And the wall rose to full height, cutting off his
lust, her influence.
"Why not?" she hissed. "You're more loyal to him than me? Who
does your assignment and works toward your goals?"
"He might have uses still," he told her. "I don't want him dead
yet."
She avoided glaring at him; the impotency of it would make any
display a farce. But she reached under the mattress and removed
the DAT tape she had picked from his jacket pocket. "I should
give this to Mulder."
He laughed. "By all means. Tell him to spread it across the
globe."
She tightened her fingers around it, for the first time actually
holding the catalyst of the last weeks. "You wouldn't stop me?"
"I'm planning something of the sort," he smirked. "That's what I
came here for...other than this," and his strong fingers stroked
her thigh. "I thought you should know that I'm no longer one of
their men. In fact they tried to kill me."
"Unfortunately not succeeding."
"That's certainly what he thought. Your nemesis, with the
cigarettes," he mimed taking a puff. "I gave him a call
afterwards, just to inform him--"
"To gloat."
"He's not a comfortable man. He may not know much about this,
but he knows that I'm an enemy. One to watch for."
She tossed him the DAT tape. "Do whatever you're planning. I
couldn't give Mulder an acceptable explanation of how I came by
it anyway."
He caught it, grinning. A boy proud of outsmarting the grown-
ups, taking shallow delight in his wits. "I've got aliased plane
tickets for tomorrow, taking me out of this country until the
heat blows over. I won't be in touch, but you might hear
something of this," he waved the tape, "if you listen at the
right keyholes."
"And you'll eventually be back," she completed the thought,
familiar with the drill.
"When I can be." They kissed. Gradually it lengthened until
they were completing the interrupted undertaking.
She debated late in the night of stealing the tape still, or of
running a magnet over it. Destroying it in some unobtrusive way.
At last she concluded that such a petty deed had no function, and
that the real enemy would be hurt more if it remained intact.
Never forget the real target. She fixed in her mind by whom she
stood, and which sides of the line the rest of the world fell.
And of course her assignment straddling it, pulled to one group
and then the other, a puppet for whoever had the strings.
In the end, he was her marionette. Before Krycek departed she
reminded him of the only element unguided. "When you come back,"
she warned him, "watch for Mulder. I can't shoot him every time
he threatens you. And don't think for a minute that they're only
threats--whatever action he'll take against you will be worse
than whatever he says aloud."
"I'll remember," he assured her, rubbing momentarily as if to
wipe away the faint bruises still on his face and neck.
Then he left for his unnamed destination. And she returned to
her work as if nothing had occurred.
She thought that everything was settled, until in Pennsylvania a
group of woman undoubtedly knew her face, her self. They forced
her to acknowledge what she ignored, and she began to regret not
mentioning it to Krycek. Of course if he had translated the
tape, perhaps he already knew. If she had dared and she had been
positive she knew how, she would have contacted him.
And for a second time it was revived when Skinner told her that
the Bureau had given up, that her final chance to revenge Missy's
murder was lost.
She pushed him; if it had been his choice alone he would scarcely
have had a choice but to obey her. But her anger was hopeless,
for the forces opposing her had power over the assistant
director's head.
Some portion of fortune sided with her, though, because tracking
Skinner's subsequent shooter lead eventually to the only assassin
who mattered, to Luis Cardinal.
The alley was dark and smelled of smoke, and she could barely
hold the gun steady, her vision going black and then red. She
wanted to see his blood, but he gasped for mercy, groped for some
salvation and stumbled across Krycek's name.
She didn't buy his offer; he couldn't possibly know the location
of his former associate. And Mulder had already told her that he
was back in the States.
All that stopped her from pulling the trigger was the reminder of
her assignment, the knowledge that such a killing could get her
expelled from the Bureau or worse. And that her character of
Agent Scully didn't crave revenge with the same intensity as her
true self.
She never actually saw Krycek, though they were told he was in
the missile silo somewhere, under the secrecy and the heavy
weight of earth. The one concession she made was to get word of
this out to his so-called comrades, allowing them to do as they
pleased with the information.
Then she went to Melissa's grave, to apologize. Though Missy
wouldn't have wanted vengeance. To ask forgiveness for not
dealing out justice, when she had known the only place it could
have come was from her hands. And she hadn't taken the only
opportunity.
Mulder came to her there, to tell her what false justice had been
meted out. Cardinal hanged in his cell. Her sister's voice
silent in her mind, no longer crying for a retribution now
impossible.
He had brought flowers, to the grave of a woman he barely knew
except in relation to his partner. And he drove her back, not
even trying to talk. Respecting her silence.
A measure of control slipped, and somewhere during that ride she
whispered aloud the words in her mind, "I'm glad he's dead."
Mulder glanced at her briefly and she damned her tongue, furious
that she could have spoken so antithetically to what he knew of
her. The tiniest glimpse behind the mask could be deadly, the
least suggestion of the lie could bring every suspicion to bear,
at last crack the illusion she had successfully maintained for
three years. Not inconceivable that she had destroyed
everything--"I didn't mean--"
But Mulder nodded, said, "Maybe you did." Calm, in no way
accusing in tone or posture. "Scully, you loved your sister.
What happened to Cardinal, that wasn't justice, and I know it
doesn't heal that hurt, but what happened to Melissa wasn't just.
In a way..."
"Eye for an eye, Mulder?" she asked tiredly.
"We don't and we shouldn't operate that way. I believe that as
strongly as I believe anything," and the corners of his mouth
smiled in self-mockery. "But," he went on, "I'd never condemn you
for being human. And even if I can't endorse it, I'd never fault
you for finding some relief in that bastard's death."
"Thank you," she told him. "Thank you for understanding."
"I try my best," he replied.
She deduced how he could understand so easily. Mulder himself,
no matter his words about not endorsing such things, craved the
death of another man in retribution.
She saw that man some months later. Krycek dressed all dark,
hovering out on the fire escape. She opened the window and he
darted inside.
The sublime confidence, the poise, was absent. He didn't seem
able to sit or stand still, but paced the room agitatedly, as if
he were searching for something. At last, finding nothing, he
slipped close behind her. Not a hair's breadth away, but no
contact.
He was changed, and she felt relieved, because in this state he
would be less likely to notice changes in her own self. Her past
had not fully prepared her for the events of the previous few
months, and she couldn't help but feel their effect.
"What's wrong?" she whispered to him.
At that his arms wrapped around her waist and drew her close,
making as if nothing was the matter. "Not anything of
consequence," his murmur assured her. "It's dangerous for me to
be anywhere near these parts."
"It's always been that way." She twisted in his embrace, shoving
him back enough to examine him closely. His face was little
altered, marred only by slight dark patches beneath the eyes; his
hair had been chopped short recently but that most likely
involved whatever role he currently played.
His body language told a different story, in its strung-out
tension, in the convulsive way he had grabbed her and his
tremulous hold now. For the first time she perceived real fear
in him, real nerves poking through to the surface. "What's so
dangerous now?"
"Nothing." He pushed her back, freeing himself. "Nothing except
my perspective." Shaking his body like a wet dog he peered into
the corners of her room. When it came, his laugh was short,
harsh, and uneven. "I always thought I was a night creature and
until recently I haven't been able to even sleep in darkness.
Let alone function."
"What happened?" she asked cautiously.
"I went to the bathroom," he grinned humorlessly, "and when I
woke up I was on top of a pyramid as big as the moon with my eyes
and my nose and my mouth filled with oil. And I saw--I saw /it/
worm its way down into its ship, and even if I didn't remember I
knew what had happened.
"I've seen variations of it, I've helped with the solution to its
infestation but I never thought I'd encounter the grandfather
worm, the first one that we were working with. I never knew" and
he shivered once, didn't continue.
"How did you get out of there?" she asked, remembering the steel
doors slammed shut with him behind them.
"I must thank you for that," and he passed his arms around her
again. "They sent some small-fry assistance. I wasn't in there
for long." But his eyes darted around the room again. Long
enough, apparently, for claustrophobia to set in.
She reached up and he accepted her embrace, burrowing his head
under her hair, against her neck.
A brief snatch of memory visited her, of Mulder responding with
the same pressure to different needs, an expulsion of his pain
and guilt and anxiety in the tears on her shoulder. But Krycek
of course shed no tears, and purged his own worries with an
action both more pleasing and more violent than Mulder would ever
attempt with her.
She suppressed that memory of her partner mourning by his
mother's bed, burying it as she lived the current experience.
"Why are you here?" she asked Krycek, when he could speak calmly.
"Because I have a new task to fulfill," he explained. "And I
thought it best to warn you before I came and dropped this in
your midst. It involves--those monsters, those aliens, however
you define them. The solution to their infestation." What he
described was tentative, full of fits and starts, explaining next
to nothing. She grasped that the danger he alluded to in his
roundabout way was greater than he let on; that he had large
fears and hopes and that Mulder was key to many of both.
And that much of it opposed the enemy that Mulder and her both
fought; she could see that revenge motivated Krycek now, payback
for his time imprisoned in the silo and the black oil that had
moved his body and mind for the period before. His plan was
smart, using her knowledge of Mulder for the leverage and control
of that pawn.
It also was risky and unwise. No matter how he used his brains,
Krycek was letting emotions dominate, his desires and his fear
motivating his behavior. She didn't argue; she plotted with him,
but all along she knew his machinations would fail.
It went well enough at first; his blunt and openly vengeful
attitude worked wonders on Mulder. They retrieved the rock
fragment without incident. Scully almost smirked at his
expression when they decided on the "safe house"; from her
descriptions of how Skinner felt of him Krycek knew what to
expect.
And then both Mulder and Krycek vanished, leaving her to testify
in front of a senate committee while she personally witnessed the
black danger that he had so feared.
She knew they were in Russia, but not even Skinner knew that she
was aware of that. What she didn't know was if they ever were to
come back, either of them. A foolish plan, as she had thought;
and if it failed completely both her assignment and the one
assigning it might be lost for good.
End Part 5
Title: "Wheels of Iscariot" 6/6
Author: Emilie Renee Karr
DISCLAIMER see part 1
Mulder at last returned, alive and whole, and from what he told
her and what she already knew, she suspected Krycek to be in much
the same condition. Confirmation of that didn't arrive for
several more months, however.
At last coded instructions brought her one afternoon to a
payphone in a mall outside Washington. When she answered its
ring Krycek's voice was on the other end. Clear as a bell
despite the distance it travelled overseas. The wonders of
technology.
"Some discoveries have been made that you might want to hear."
"I'm listening."
"We've finally translated and researched all the data on the DAT
tape, as well as investigated the leads you gave us about those
women in Pennsylvania."
A cold shiver crossed her spine at the hesitation in his tone.
"Yes?" she pushed.
Speaking hurriedly, as if the phone bill could possibly matter,
he explained, "The implant and the abductions are directly
correlated with the cancer. The medical data will be faxed to
the correct source for you to view, but I can tell you the
basics.
"If you haven't monitored this, every one of the women you met
last year have developed brain tumors, malignant masses in their
nasal passages. Half of them have died already. They can't be
helped and it's very likely their health is being intentionally
worsened."
"Covering up?" she asked.
"Not sure. Possibly just another sequence of experiments. But
the basic facts are clear--you yourself have this cancer. The
tumor might not even be detectable now, but it's there and it's
growing."
"How long before I can test for this?"
"I'm not a doctor. Maybe now, if you have the right techniques.
Soon, certainly."
"And what do you want me to do about it?"
"You aren't going to die," he assured her. "You have resources
they all lacked. I could send--"
"Nurse Owens?"
"Her kind, yes." The miracle workers. The savers--and
destroyers--of lives and souls; how much had Krycek heard of
Jeremiah Smith and the un-man who slayed him?
He interrupted her thoughts. "I can send one, but there are other
ways more useful to our cause."
Of course the assignment; it was why he cared at all. "You want
me to find the cure they have."
"If they have one, we want to know it. Could you do it?"
She could do whatever he asked. "Mulder might." And that was
what he desired, of course. Maximum use out of the captured
piece. She had all the proper tools at her fingertips.
And he commanded her to use them. "Wish I could watch personally,
but there's so much to do here. I won't be back in the states
for months yet, I'm sorry to say. I'll see you when I return."
"I'll be waiting." He disconnected. She returned to work.
Days later, the flaw in Krycek's words occurred to her.
She hadn't the chance to consider it thoroughly, but in the
depths of her subconscious questions had boiled, finally bubbling
over. After a night of sifting through data, of perusing her
memory and files and every hospital record from that wretched
time two years ago, she reached the correct conclusion.
Mulder somehow picked up the shreds of it in her look, her body
language and her voice. Interpretation was impossible, knowing
so little as he did, but when his queries after how she felt met
with no response he became edgy, solicitous yet angry with her as
well, as he at last perceived something hidden.
She tried, but she couldn't cover this as she had so many times
before, with so many other things. At night her bed felt cold,
sleep distant as her mind asked her where her life was, where it
could go. During the days she felt increasingly divided between
a self that she thought had almost been adopted as reality, and
her inner nature feeling itself eclipsed and already dying.
It was enjoyable to let that self slip out for the one night when
Mulder couldn't see. To excite a stranger's blood, to feel his
presence freely, without the odd false tension of interacting
with her partner or the force of Krycek's expectations. Even
despite the sorrowful conclusion she took pleasure in it.
A mere week after she awoke one dark night, Leonard Betts' words
echoing in her ears and her own blood on her hands. And she felt
a peculiar sort of relief, knowing that the subterfuge was over.
As soon as she confirmed it scientifically, so there could be no
chance of doubt, she set Mulder on it. Krycek's assignment, but
more so her own goal. Of all those for and against her in the
world, Mulder was the only one who could succeed. Krycek's
promises were not to be believed. She could not trust in the
mysterious powers of the miracle-workers.
Then her only hope of life lay in Fox Mulder's hands. Her
assignment. She had molded him for Krycek, for his circles and
interests, but she hadn't been forbidden to use him for her own
purposes. And since she was the only one alive now who held the
key to his being, no one could even stop her.
The moment he gave her the bouquet in the hospital, she knew she
had him. Every motion, every nuance of action, every look in his
eye, told her eloquently of her success. The very fibre of his
being was altered.
Before, when she had entered his office years ago, she had seen
and knew a man possessed. Focused solely on one goal, to the
exclusion of rest, of happiness, of life.
And less then five years later, she had changed that goal. With
simple words, simple looks, with an x-ray and a nosebleed, in
less than a day she had redirected his existence.
He might not even see it himself. All people are inherently
blind to their innermost heart. But much as he still loved his
sister, finding Samantha had been surpassed by another dream, of
finding Scully's life, of finding her cure.
Krycek's assignment fulfilled. But this wasn't why she found a
pay phone scant days later, spent precious time bickering with
underlings until she had contacted him directly.
Before his greeting could die on his lips she whispered her
question. "Why am I dying, when your Nurse Owens cleansed my body
of everything damaging?"
"Because you were going to first try with your assignment, so I
haven't given them instructions," he explained patiently.
"No." Scully shook her head, invisible though it was to him.
"When she saved me before. Why didn't she heal the element
that's turning cancerous now?"
The briefest of pauses. "She only did as she was told, bring you
back to life."
More than anything she wanted to see his face, though the lie was
clear in his voice. The tiny quiet, in which she had heard the
annihilation of her life. "But they can do more?"
"Of course," he assured her. "They can save you."
Liar. She didn't repeat her thought aloud. She couldn't be
positive; it was possible, perhaps even likely that he believed
in what he said.
She couldn't believe it herself, though. They had limits, these
gods. They could be killed; they were neither immortal nor
omnipotent. Krycek, because he hadn't seen so personally, might
completely accept their power.
But the ones who had given her this disease invisible inside her.
They could fathom those limits. Those who had disposed of the
Jeremiah Smiths across the nation might have done something
purposely beyond their capabilities.
She passed only a hint of her conclusion to Krycek. And he blew
it off casually, as if angry at her doubts. "If I ask, they'll
save you. That's all it depends on. Whether or not I say the
word."
"When it's necessary, see that you say it." No matter how
pointless it may be. Too dangerous now to reveal her doubts, so
she turned her talk away. "Take caution, though," she mentioned.
"They're watching, closer than before."
"As long as you're aware of them, it's no worry."
"I've always kept my eyes open. In five years they haven't seen
anything."
"We're watching too. Though not me personally. I won't see you
in a while yet; there's so much still to do," he sighed.
"Until when?"
His answer was indistinct. "Hard to say. But you're still
important. Don't forget that. You're working on our side, with
us."
Because it had always been in her best interests to do so.
Because he had offered and given her power, an assignment of
interest, a purpose, and he could trust her to be loyal to that.
If he only realized now how slim a hold it all was. With her
life now a set clock, rewards lost their shine, power lost its
promise. And the influence he dangled over her head, the cure he
leashed her with, she saw it for what it was. No chain at all,
nothing but impotent illusion holding her in place.
Easy to recall how much she was on his side.
"I won't forget," she said, and couldn't help but add ironically,
"You hold my mortality now as well."
His voice was cool. "I remember."
Before any more promises or disguised threats could be extended
she pushed down on the phone's hook, at last lifting her finger
and listening to the low hum of the dial tone.
And life rushed onward. She continued at her job, her
occupation, with renewed vigor. Mulder balanced his efforts and
his desperation with the quiet support and teasing sarcasm he had
always offered.
He tried to forget his task, though every time he looked at her
somehow he caught a hint of the death beneath the surface of her
face.
Yet somehow, despite his fears, she had confidence in his
abilities. Backed by his determination death felt nearly as far
as it had when Krycek first had told her, and the cure seemed so
simple, this obstacle nothing more than another step along the
path. Instead of the final march.
That was the way it went until the results came. The cancer
inside metastasizing, and finally they could give her a straight
number, a prescribed amount of days that she could not live
beyond.
Mulder, her hope, her assignment--Mulder was gone, not the first
time, but for her it was the first time that he was so
conspicuously absent. The time that she realized how much she
was depending on him, for so many things. Dangerous in itself,
how many different ways she needed him.
And then the man Kritschgau appeared, with his information sharp
and plausible. A possible cure, a definite danger. And facts
that even Krycek had never had access to. Those she relayed
immediately, by the measures that had always kept her assigners
informed.
And finally, the death and the plan, buying Mulder time to buy
her own life.
So now she sat in her dark apartment, and tried to choose the
best action. Call them, tell them, give them the truth behind
the lie.
A truth they were bound to already have. A great risk, to
contact them at all.
She owed them little. They didn't hold her life; that lay in her
hands, in Mulder's cause which she possessed the only key to.
Krycek had given her this assignment and hadn't known where it
would lead, hadn't even been sure she could accomplish it. But
she had told him the truth, she could do whatever he had asked,
and she had done this better than any previous task.
She wished he were here now, so instead of calling some
stranger's voice, she could tell him personally. Purr the truth
in his ear as he held her, and feel his response to her words
against her body.
Except that if he were here, she knew that the passion would not
be in her, that her desire would look and reject him. Find him
not worthy of a new standard that had developed beyond her self-
set limits.
A frightening proposition in itself, that anything could happen
outside of those boundaries. They were the only rules that
checked her, because in dying she now was free from others'
restraints.
What Mulder never perceived, beyond how blind he still was to her
machinations, was how much a pawn he was, how deeply he existed
under the control of so many forces.
Now, for almost the first time, he lived in command of his own
actions, uninfluenced by any source except herself. And she was
part of him. That had been her assignment from the start, and
she had succeeded, so well that in what he did for her he did for
his own self, and what he did for himself was also for her.
Dangerous, as Krycek always had said. An uncontrolled pawn
could, would, wreak havoc on all sides.
Independent, yet working for her goal.
Fox Mulder, her assignment, and she owed the giver nothing and
everything.
Scully picked up the phone, dialed a number, and began to speak.
The End
Should I make it the trilogy I originally envisioned, or stop
now?
ERK